Monthly Archives: November 2011

Issues and Challenges to Starting a Blog

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New bloggers often approach blogging with high hopes and visions of a bright future. While it’s true that some bloggers become successful and have become rich because of blogging, millions of others are struggling or have given up because they realized at some point how challenging blogging can really be.

Although it helps to approach an undertaking with a positive mind and to believe in your impending success, it also helps to keep your feet on the ground and be conscious of the real difficulties of blogging. You don’t want to have to be told I told you so.

Some real issues and challenges you might have to face include:

1. Steep Competition – There are millions of bloggers out there and there’s bound to be others blogging about your topic. This again is a good reason to be an authority in your topic. Also, you need to be able to present a unique angle to your topic so you stand out from the rest.

2. Technical Issues – Unless you have a formally organized business with a budget, chances are you are a one-man blogger with few resources. This means, you will not have technical staff to help you out so you’ll have to figure out such things as pointing domains to servers, installing WordPress, understanding permalink options, installing plugins, customizing themes, etc.

Add to these initial technical concerns, issues that just pop up at different points in time such as the need to transfer to a new registrar or host if your current one suddenly goes nuts on you.

3. Hackers/Trolls/Destroyers – One issue many bloggers have had to face is attacks from malicious entities that are out to destroy. These include hackers and creators of malicious scripts and software. These bad entities can get to you if you fail to take steps to keep your blog protected or if your host’s safety precautions fall short.

Trolls, or variations of these entities, are people who will dislike you, hate you or publish demeaning remarks about you for no other reason than they just want to. Encountering these people can pose an internal challenge to you. You’ve got to find ways to keep motivated when you encounter negativity.

4. Lack of Manpower – The tasks involved in blogging can build up through time. As a professional blogger, you’ll have to dish out regular content, perform maintenance tasks, engage with followers, look for better monetization models and entertain proposals among other things. Not having people to help you out would again mean you’d have to do a lot on your own.

Even if you’re able to financially support an employee or remote worker, you’d have to put some effort into finding the right person. Otherwise, you’d get burned.

5. Low Funds – Initially, you just need money to pay for registration and hosting. A domain is around $10 a year but most reliable hosting providers will charge monthly fees of about $5 or so. Depending on your economic situation, this may or may not be affordable for you.

Once your blog starts to grow, you might find the need to spend on support services and tools that can help make your blog better.

6. Minimal Income – A common challenge for bloggers wanting to make money out of their blogs is the inability to make enough cash. This may be because they may not be in a profitable market, they don’t know who their market is, they aren’t reaching their market or they have a bad product.

Even if you’ve touched base with your market with a good product though, keep in mind it’s not always realistic to expect that you’ll retire rich because of blogging.

7. No Readers – Just like the inability to generate a good income stream, having no visitors can stem from several different factors including not knowing your target market or incorrect promotional tactics

These are only some of the possible challenges you might have to face as a blogger. There are many more. Keep in mind that these are presented here not to discourage you or convince you not to blog. These points are meant to help you prepare for possible issues you may encounter and to keep your expectations realistic.

To summarize, preparing to blog involves defining your objectives, identifying interests, determining aptitude and staying realistic. In the next section we’ll tackle the all important step of market research.

Preparing to Start a Blog

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Now that we’ve got the basic definition of terms out of the way, the next step for you to take is to prepare yourself psychologically.

You might think blogging isn’t as tough as trading perhaps of taking the bar exams and shouldn’t have to require this kind of preparation. You’re right. Anyone can do a post, but if you wish to achieve something or if you want your blog to have an impact on beings other than yourself, your cat and your mother, you need to sit down and read through this.

Here are steps you need to take to prepare to blog:

Define Intentions or Objectives

Like every other decision you make, you should have a purpose, intention or objective for wanting to start a blog. This is all really just beginning with the end in mind. This is what will eventually give you the seed idea for your blog topic or niche.

To keep things simple, start figuring out your intentions or objectives by asking yourself — Do I want to blog about:

  • something personal, perhaps for therapeutic purposes or to keep family and friends updated
  • updates/tutorials/tips about a hobby, interest or topic I’m passionate about
  • a cause I want to champion
  • a profitable topic solely to make money
  • something personal or a hobby and to make money on the side

Figure Out Interest and Aptitude

It should be obvious to you what your interests are after thinking about your intentions for blogging. Often, it’s tempting to just pursue your interest. It’s crucial however to figure out if you have the aptitude to blog about your topic or at least the determination to develop that aptitude.

For instance, I’m very interested in music, but I don’t have the aptitude to blog authoritatively about it, nor do I have the time or desire to continuously learn about it. I should thus think twice about blogging about a music-related topic.

Why is aptitude assessment important? It’s important because people will not be interested in your blog if they can’t learn anything new or get anything valuable from your posts. You therefore need to be able to teach or demonstrate expertise.

You don’t have to be the best expert in town. You just need to know more than the average guy.

In the same vein, having the aptitude to blog about something you’re not interest in isn’t a good idea. For example, in school my highest aptitude score was in math but my abysmal actual subject grades proved that the either the teacher handed me the wrong results or I really didn’t like math. Imagine my misery if I had to blog the topic.

Of course, common sense should tell you not to pursue something you’re not interested in but some people pick topics they’re not crazy about because of the monetary value of those topics.

Thinking of your objectives, interests and aptitude is just the beginning of the preparations you need to take before you start a blog. In the next post, you’ll learn more about the actual challenges to blogging and keeping your expectations realistic.

Types of Blogs According to Topic

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There is no single accurate count for the total number of existing blogs. Many sources agree though, including Technorati, that there are now more than 100 million blogs on the internet today. Their sheer quantity makes it difficult to try to classify blogs. Add to this the fact that there are no official rules that specify the boundaries blogs should follow in order to fall under a particular kind.

For the purpose of learning how to blog however, it’s important to get an idea of some of the more popular types of blogs. This will make it easier for you to decide for yourself what tone, theme, approach or direction to take for your own blog.

Topic Classifications

There are many different ways to group blogs. To simplify matters, let’s look into classifying blogs according to topic. Blogs can fall under:

  • Personal
  • Themed/Niche
  • Mixed
  • Corporate/Business/Official

Personal Blogs

These are the most common kinds of blogs and are often the easiest to find content for. This is because these feature personal life experiences and events or author opinions and thoughts.

In effect, personal blogs are the closest examples of traditional blogs. They are essentially online diaries and journals that carry a personal tone. Examples of personal blogs include:

Themed/Niche Blogs

A blog of this type may or may not be written in a personal tone depending on the author’s preference. Themed or niche online properties however distinguish themselves from the personal kind because they revolve around a specific area of concentration, usually excluding highly unrelated topics.

Themed blogs can either be broad or specific. For example in the area of health, you can choose to write about the broad topic of health or the more particular sub topic of low card dieting. In the area of sports, you can choose to blog about all kinds of sports or you can concentrate on the specific topic of boxing.

Here are some actual examples:

Mixed Blogs

In between personal and themed blogs, there has emerged the mixed kind. These feature a variety of topics and tones as the author sees fit to publish. Bloggers have a variety of reasons and motivations for having these.

I wouldn’t recommend going down this path unless you’re already a popular person or you have a well formed objective in mind. This is because it is difficult to create a dedicated readership when you write about a variety of different topics.

Corporate/Official Blogs

These are the kinds of blogs written for and about a specific company, organization, movement, institution or public figure. Bloggers or staff members are usually commissioned to write according to the values, principles or identity of the official owner. Examples include:

Best Types of Blog

Unless you’ve been hired to write for an organization or you own a company, you really have only two options, a personal or a themed blog. The best kind will depend on your intentions, purpose or objectives for blogging.

Based on my own experience however, I would lean towards setting up blogs about specific themes or niches. Blogs with themes are the ones that are likely to develop a following. There are groups of people out there that are absolutely dedicated to specific topics and they might follow you if you develop a great blog about their interest.

Take note though that you should never go for a niche or theme that is too narrow. Otherwise, you may not have enough information or content to publish.

Now that you know what a blog is and what kinds are out there, it’s time for you to prepare to blog. The next section will tackle defining your intentions and forming the right mindset.

What is a Blog?

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Before you can start blogging, you naturally have to understand what it is. You might already have an idea or you might have read a couple of different definitions online. I shall attempt to combine here the important elements and features of a traditional blog to come up with an inclusive definition.

A Simple Definition

A blog is short for web log and is essentially a kind of website or part of a website, the owner of which regularly publishes content called posts. These posts are arranged in reverse chronological order and are open to visitor interaction in the form of comments.

From this definition it’s clear that a traditional blog:

  • is a kind of website or part of a website
  • has regularly published content
  • organizes content in reverse chronological order
  • invites interaction

It is because of these aspects that blogs were once often regarded mainly as online journals, diaries and logs.

Note that I specifically defined a traditional blog. This is mainly because there are now several blog-type web properties that no longer strictly fit this definition.

Blogs vs. Websites

Although a blog is a type of website, sometimes it’s easier to form a better picture of what a blog is when it is compared with a general website. As you might have guessed, a plain website:

  • may not be expected by visitors to have fresh, regularly updated content although it can carry new content when the webmaster sees fit to publish
  • may not be open to comments
  • can contain evergreen content such as non varying information about a company
  • can optionally have limited content that gives basic information about something like a company, corporate entity or organization

Some people call websites static. Unlike blogs where regular content pushes old content down such that a blog may contain a different entry at different times, some websites may contain the same pieces of information at the front so that visitors always see the same thing every time they visit or for extended periods of time.

Again, there are many exceptions here. News websites for example are required to be frequently updated. It’s important to keep in mind that today, the distinctions between blogs and websites can get blurred.

It’s also important to note that some webmasters choose to use various blogging platforms to publish content online but do so in a way that departs from the traditional definition of a blog. Some for example, turn off time and date stamps to create the impression of evergreen posts or content. Others also turn off comments.

Expanding the Definition of Blogs

There are also those bloggers who choose to expand the traditional definition of blogs. In short, they add or enhance the elements, qualities or features of their blogs to fit their needs, intentions and preferences. For example, blogs today can:

  • include options to share, distribute or spread content
  • offer a visible way for visitors to subscribe to get updates on fresh content
  • integrate with social networks to foster a sense of community
  • include forms of monetization
  • be used for marketing

This is as close as I can get to a simple answer to, “What is a blog?” but there’s a lot more basic information you need to learn about. Coming next, we’ll explore the different types of blogs.